


Again

by ladyoftheskulls



Series: "We can do you a double..." [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: First Time, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-28
Updated: 2014-12-28
Packaged: 2018-03-04 00:27:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,988
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2902697
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladyoftheskulls/pseuds/ladyoftheskulls
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bed-sharing in Baskerville: a reprise, this time with some misunderstandings set right.  All's well that ends well!<br/>Sequel to <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/2662328">"I think you should know that..."</a></p>
            </blockquote>





	Again

**Author's Note:**

> A fluffy fix-it for a previous ficlet. Set between THOB and TRF.
> 
> (Oh, but because I can't help it, there's a hint of angst-to-come, if you look closely. Sorry...)
> 
> Un-betaed; comments welcome!

"Again."

"Muh?" John is already half-asleep; the multiple adrenaline spikes of the day have left him utterly exhausted, so that all he'd wanted to do upon finally returning to their room was crawl into the large bed, pull the covers over himself and switch out the light so he could go to sleep. Which he would be doing right now, if Sherlock didn't insist on talking to him.

"You said 'again'." Sherlock is lying on his back next to John, still fully dressed and on top of the covers, hands steepled in front of his chin in his characteristic thinking pose. Apparently solving one mystery today isn't enough for him; ever since they got back to the hotel he's been unusually quiet in that way that signals that he's puzzling over something, though John has no idea what.

John replies with an incoherent mumbling noise that’s intended to mean “Go away, ‘m asleep” and comes out sounding roughly like “gmmphrmphph”.

"Last night," Sherlock clarifies, and suddenly John's wide-awake. _Oh God. Not this_.

"Look, I thought we weren't going to -- can we please not talk about that?" He can feel himself going red all the way to the tips of his ears; never mind that they're lying there in the dark, Sherlock can probably deduce his furious blush from the heat radiating from his face. The thought makes him blush even worse. Too much to hope that Sherlock would actually have deleted it (though why he should consider an awkward, one-sided, middle-of-the-night sexual almost-encounter, that had ended with John making a hasty exit to the bathroom for a wank, to be something that merited hard drive space, John has no idea) but normal people would at least pretend they didn’t remember, or that it hadn’t happened. Then again, there’s no point comparing Sherlock to ‘normal people’, ever. Maybe if he just pretends he’s going back to sleep…

“John.” Giving in, John cracks open an eye and peers over. In the dim half-light of the overcast moon, he can see that Sherlock has turned his head and is gazing at him with the sort of intensity usually reserved for his most fascinating cases, that narrows to an even sharper focus with his next words. “ _What did you think I was going to say_?”

“Sherlock, I don’t – what do you mean?” Awake he may be, but his brain is still simultaneously playing catch-up with the current conversation and attempting to hide from the frankly embarrassing ( _don’t even think disturbingly hot_ ) memories of last night’s… activities.

The eyes staring intently into his narrow slightly. “Wait, let me deduce…”

“What – no, hang on, I don’t – Sherlock, what are you _doing_?” John’s voice rises to a rather undignified squeal on the last word: Sherlock has dived below the covers, clothes and all, and wrapped himself around John in a decidedly intimate manner, arms tangled together and one long trouser-clad leg deftly inserting itself between John’s knees; there are hands everywhere and they’re _cold_.

Sherlock is muttering under his breath. “So, we woke up like this, and your arm was like _this_ , and my hand was _here_ , and you were –“ John lets out a stifled squawk and jerks away as Sherlock’s leg presses into what is definitely not neutral territory.

“Sherlock, stop it! We are not discussing this. And we are _definitely_ not doing a dramatic re-enactment of the event.” Once was bad ( _tempting_ , his brain supplies) enough as it was; the last thing he needs is to encourage his unrequited attraction to manifest itself again, this time without even the excuse of having been asleep as a barely-plausible explanation for his body’s lack of appropriate bed-sharing manners.

“Hush, John, I’m thinking.” One of the hands is wandering absent-mindedly up John’s ribs, fingers tapping out a complex pattern. _Paganini or Morse code_? John wonders, and then has to fight down an inappropriate impulse to giggle. Not that anything about the present situation could be described as remotely appropriate. “I said, ‘I think you should know that –‘ and then you interrupted me and said –"

“Don’t.” John has already spent most of today (or at least the parts of it that weren’t spent breaking into top-secret research facilities, chasing lunatics across the moors or hiding from monstrous mutant dogs – even if the latter had turned out to be a figment of his drug-fuelled imagination) trying not to think about the night before. The last thing he needs is to be subjected to a blow-by-blow ( _don’t even go near that innuendo_ , warns his brain) retelling in Sherlock’s rapid-fire case analysis mode, which will no doubt reveal with clinical detachment, devastating accuracy and a good helping of scorn just how misguided and unwanted his desire had been. _Sentiment_ , his inner voice reminds him mockingly of what Sherlock would say. “I really don’t want to hear –“

“No! Stop it, you’re interrupting me again and getting it wrong. You said ‘Don’t’, but _then_ you said, ‘I know what you’re going to say; you don’t have to tell me again’. But – oh!” Sherlock’s body goes rigid with the excitement of discovery, abruptly withdrawing all his limbs to lie taut and stretched out beside John, staring at nothing as his brain leaps along the chain of logic. The hand remains, however, drumming out its complex rhythm, though now on John’s shoulder.

“How could you have known what I was going to say? Answer: you didn’t. Because what I was going to say was something I hadn’t said to you previously – but _you_ said ‘again’, so clearly you thought it _was_ something I had said before, so – conclusion: you _didn’t_ know what I was going to say. But in response to whatever you _thought_ I was about to say, that you didn’t want me to repeat, you jumped out of bed and –“

“Yes, yes, ok,” John cuts in hurriedly.  He definitely doesn’t need to hear that part repeated.

“So,” Sherlock rolls back towards John, lightning-quick, so that they’re now face to face, disconcertingly close, “in fact there are two questions. The first is, what did you think I was going to say? But the second, and possibly the more important – how would you have responded to what I was _actually_ about to say?” His gaze is strangely intent across the few inches of pillow separating them.

John swallows, his throat suddenly dry. He’s used to being left behind by the speed and brilliance of Sherlock’s deductions, to being confronted with the seemingly impossible question at the end, to which Sherlock will produce the answer like a rabbit that was clearly in the hat all along (“it’s _obvious_ , John”), upon which John will only be able to respond, _Amazing_. Because he is, really, temper tantrums and severed heads in the fridge and disregard for household chores notwithstanding; Sherlock is amazing, and the best thing that could have happened to John. And all right, if that sounds a bit more admiring than “we’re just friends” and “he’s my flatmate” would strictly suggest, that’s something John only admits to his innermost self. Because up to and including last night – up to, in fact, about two and a half seconds ago, he would have dismissed any suggestion that Sherlock might return his feelings, dismissed it as quickly as he had thought Sherlock was about to do last night. _Sentiment_ and _caring_ don’t help with the work; they don’t solve problems, they create them.

But somehow, John knows, this is different. Somehow, this is a problem unlike any he has seen Sherlock confront before, and John knows that Sherlock can’t deduce this last step, that he’s the only one who can give Sherlock the answer he's looking for, and that what that answer will be is vitally, heartstoppingly important. Sherlock is still looking at him with a desperate kind of longing in his eyes, and he can feel the deep gulf of possibility opening up before him, at once seductive and terrifying, like standing at the very edge of a cliff or a high rooftop, beckoning him to fall, into oblivion or into a knowledge more blinding than any he has ever known...

Well, he isn’t Sherlock Holmes. No credibility-defying flashes of reasoning here; he can only start with what he knows.

“Um. That first night, at Angelo’s.” He can feel a shiver run through Sherlock’s body, next to his, but Sherlock doesn’t seem surprised; instead he gives a tiny nod, as if in confirmation. “You said,” he has to stop and clear his throat, tries again, “you said you were –“

“Married to my work. I know.” Sherlock’s voice is a deep rumble, barely audible even in the stillness of the room.

“And so,” John fumbles for words. “I assumed last night when you –“

“That wasn’t what I was going to say.” There’s no triumph in Sherlock’s tone at being proven correct, but a quiet intensity, a need to be understood and to understand. “And anyway,” there’s a long pause, as if Sherlock is struggling to admit something, “I was wrong.”

John is left speechless. Hearing Sherlock declare himself to have been wrong so calmly and simply, without prevarication or excuses, is startling enough, but John knows it’s the deeper admission, the one that leaves him open to being hurt and at the same time places all his trust in John not to hurt him, that costs the most dear, and means the most to John. Because if Sherlock is admitting that he was wrong back then, that he meant something different last night, that John could have – should have – done something else on waking to find them inadvertently but undeniably intimately entwined, then that must mean –

He can feel his heart opening like a flower within his chest, and he starts to say something but Sherlock keeps talking, hurriedly, as if now the words, having started to flow, demand to be said.

“I said the wrong thing then, and I know I’ve said and done a lot of wrong things –“ _including yesterday and today_ , John thinks with one wry corner of his mind but doesn’t say, after all this doesn’t seem like the moment –

“– including what I said yesterday about not having friends, and what I did today experimenting on you with the sugar –“ _and in the lab_ , John thinks, but this time Sherlock carries on without reading his mind, apparently –

“– but last night,” Sherlock’s eyes are focused on him, seemingly enormous, he feels like he could fall forever into their depths, “last night _you_ were wrong,” _there’s always something_ , the wry corner comments again, but it’s smiling and doesn’t seem able to stop, “last night you didn’t give me a chance to say what I was going to say, and it wasn’t what you thought, and you needn’t have got out of bed at all, if you didn’t want to, because I want to do everything you want…”

John’s train of thought is suddenly and shockingly derailed by a barrage of explicit mental images involving Sherlock doing _everything_ he wants, and he has to blink several times to clear his mind enough to get back on track.

“… and I thought maybe…” Sherlock’s hand has crept closer and closer to where John’s is lying on the coverlet, as if longing to touch but not quite daring, so that their fingers are barely millimetres apart.

“… we could try…”

The sentence trails off. In the pale half-light from the window, Sherlock’s eyes are wide, his pupils huge and dark, and the look on his face is one John has never seen on it before: yearning, hopeful, but above all vulnerable, like he’s waiting for John to complete his sentence, to know what it is he needs; to know, this time, what it is he is going to say.

And John does, as he closes the last fraction of distance between them, as their lips and hands touch, as he breathes the last word into Sherlock’s mouth, barely a whisper:

“… again?”

 


End file.
